Horoscope

ARIES (March 21April 19): The coming year will be a favorable time for you to prostrate yourself in prayer on mountaintops, to grunt ferocious promises into the night wind while standing on rooftops, to dance yourself into an ecstatic state and then meditate on your life's bottomless questions, and to make love with funky spiritual grace while flying on a plane. Catch my drift, Aries? Doing anything that combines heights and depths will put you in alignment with cosmic rhythms.

TAURUS (April 20May 20): It's possible you'll live for 150 years. Scientific studies on how to outwit the aging process are generating increasingly compelling data, and so is psychospiritual research into the attitudes and emotions that encourage longevity. The coming year will be prime time for you to make yourself aware of these explorations and to adjust your lifestyle accordingly. Here are two places to start your investigation: (1) the article "I'm Going to Live Forever," at tinyurl.com/6w4wh, and (2) the book
Fantastic Voyage: Live Long Enough to Live Forever, by Ray Kurzweil and Terry Grossman, at tinyurl.com/nv35y.

GEMINI (May 21June 20):Jargon Watch author Gareth Branwyn defines
obstacle illusio n as "something
that looks like it will be a huge problem but turns out not to be." This is your theme for early 2007, Gemini. You may imagine you'll have to face a lot of resistance to your dreams, when in fact you won't. You might even gear up for confrontations that don't actually need to take place. Ironically, though, the willpower
and tenacity you summon while expecting to face difficulties could prove valuable. So maybe it's fine if at first
you don't realize that the obstacles are illusions.

CANCER (June 21July 22): I predict that you won't punch out Paris Hilton in a bar in 2007, nor will you buy your own Learjet, train to be a Shaolin kung fu monk, or get a clip-on nose ring. Leather chaps? I bet you won't wear them even once, nor will you sneak into your old high school at night and spray-paint obscenities on the walls. In the coming year, you might, on the other hand, get a tattoo of the glyph for infinity. You may obtain a ceremonial sword and use it in a ritual to symbolically cut away a certain dead-end fantasy you've been clinging to even though it's no damn good for you. You could also go on a quest to satisfy your oldest curiosity and learn a lot about how to control your emotions without repressing them.

LEO (July 23Aug. 22): From a metaphorical perspective, Leo, the 2006 chapter of your life story could have been titled "Asleep in the Garden." Beautiful fertility and fertile beauty have surrounded you, but you've been more aware of them in your dreams and subconscious mind than in your conscious waking life. I expect that to change in 2007. That's why I'm envisioning a new chapter that'll be called "Awake in the Garden."

VIRGO (Aug. 23Sept. 22): Patriarch Bartholomew, the leader of the Orthodox Christian Church, has a flock of 300 million. Unlike most other religious leaders, he crusades for the preservation of the environment. "To commit a crime against the natural world is a sin," he says. "For humans to cause species to become extinct and to destroy the biological diversity of God's creation; for humans to contaminate the earth's waters, land, air, and life with poisonous substances: These are sins." The astrological omens suggest that he'll be a good role model for you in 2007, Virgo. You'll generate lush personal dividends if you intensify your intention to live in harmony with nature and invoke a spiritual zeal as you defend your planet against its despoilers.

LIBRA (Sept. 23Oct. 22): I predict that sometime in the coming year, two rich attorneys will offer you $20,000 if you'll deliver a cursed diamond to their shaman in Brazil for exorcism. But you will demand that they not only give you the money, but also introduce you to their good friend Angelina Jolie. They'll balk at that, and the deal will fall through. But then you'll write a movie script based on your fantasy of the experience you might have had if you had actually done the deal, and you'll sell the script to a producer who gets Angelina Jolie to be one of the stars. And if that exact scenario doesn't happen as prophesied, Libra, I bet you'll have a comparable adventure or two that will revolve around the power of your imagination, your determination to hold out for exactly what you want, and a rich harvest of poetic justice.

SCORPIO (Oct. 23Nov. 21): On the first Monday of every month, a vision of the Virgin Mary appears on the back porch of Audrey Hoff's house in Miami. Even if you usually have no interest in curiosities like this, Scorpio, I predict that in 2007 you'll be involved in a comparable phenomenon. It won't necessarily feature the Virgin Mary, but it will be in alignment with your particular belief system. So if you're a Buddhist, you may have dreams of the Buddha visiting your bedroom. If you're a gay Republican, you might have vivid waking visions of Abraham Lincoln and Ronald Reagan making holy love in a log cabin. If you're an atheist, you could have a series of spectacular epiphanies that prove to you with ever greater certainty that there is no God.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22Dec. 21): If 2006 sometimes felt like the Year of Perpetual PMS (even for you men), 2007 will quickly make you forget any bloated, edgy feelings that may still linger. The coming months may in fact feel like the Year of Perpetual Ovulation (even for you men). I bet you'll often feel horny not just for sexual adventures but for other kinds of intimate exchanges that make you smarter and wilder.

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22Jan. 19): Your power animal in 2007 will be the hare, whose front legs are shorter than its back legs, allowing it to run uphill with exceptional speed. What this means, Capricorn, is that
while you will have more ascents than usual to make in the coming months, you will also be well equipped to carry them out with efficiency and power. The steep challenges you face might feel daunting to anyone else, but your heightened ability to conquer them will often inspire you to approach them with relish.

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20Feb. 18): Some people imagine that the Aquarian age, if it ever kicks in, will be an airy-fairy affair, rife with crystal healings and dolphin channeling, in which we'll be surrounded by neo-hippie do-gooders who spread sentimental love. But that's all wrong. The real Aquarian age will bring a revolution in our political and economic structures, fueled by the Internet and other technologies. There'll be intelligent machines with whom we'll develop complex relationships. Sexual identities will mutate and expand, leading to at least seven distinct genders, and there'll be a host of new ways to experience erotic pleasure. Advances in anti-aging research, nanotechnology, and genetic manipulation will mutate many ideas about what it means to be human. You are by no means obligated to be on the front lines of this revolution, Aquarius. But if you do feel inclined to hang out there, 2007 will be the most adventurous year of your life so far.

PISCES (Feb. 19March 20): "Picture the Grand Canyon," says Buddhist teacher Jack Kornfield. "Every hundred years, a child comes by and throws a mustard seed into it. In the time it takes to fill the hole in the earth with mustard seeds, one mahakalpa will have passed. To perfect the virtuous heartthe joy of integritytakes a thousand mahakalpas." If that's true, Pisces, then you've still got a lot of work to do. However, the planets are aligned in such a way as to suggest you could make unusually great progress toward the goal of perfecting the virtuous heart in 2007. For best results, meditate often on the phrase "the joy of integrity." Get very familiar with the pleasurable emotion that comes from acting with impeccability. And try out this idea from Gandhi: Integrity is the royal road to your inner freedom.

Homework To check out my expanded audio preview of your destiny in 2007, go to realastrology.com.